Should I weigh myself daily?

For weight loss as well as preventing diabetes, your scale can be valuable as a partner and a tool throughout your weight loss plan and beyond. People who weigh themselves often tend to lose more weight and keep it off. A weekly weigh-in is your “official,” weight to use for tracking. Weight is an indispensable part of weight loss, as your Lark coach may have hinted at already. While you should not count a daily weigh-in as your official weight, weighing yourself each day has its advantages.

Weighing Daily Has Benefits

Previous thinking was that weighing daily could get you down and served no purpose. More recent thinking has accepted that weighing yourself daily can increase accountability. Science even supports this idea, as people who weigh daily have been found to lose more weight than those who do not.

How often should I weigh myself?

Some people cannot stand the thought of getting on the scale each day. If you are one of those people, it is okay not to weigh every day, so long as you are confident that you are still committed to those daily weight loss choices, it is okay to skip the daily weigh-in. Just make sure weigh yourself weekly. How else will you know what you weigh when you are trying to lose weight?

Best Weigh-in Practices

It does not take a rocket scientist to step on a scale, but a quick review of how to weigh yourself can help you get more accurate, more consistent, and, well, better results.

Weigh yourself in the morning as soon as you wake up and go to the bathroom.

If your scale is not automatically connected to your phone, be sure to write down the number or enter it into Lark immediately so you do not forget it.

Next, breathe deeply. Those daily ups and downs on the scale are not likely to be changes in your body fat. They reflect the water in your body. You may be up in weight one day due to many reasons, such as a high-sodium day the day before, or down in weight for reasons such as mild dehydration.

The “Official” Weekly Weigh-in

Remember, it takes a difference of 3,500 calories to lose or gain a pound of body fat. You are not going to gain a pound of fat unless you eat the equivalent of a bagel with cream cheese, a triple cheeseburger, and half a cheese pizza beyond your usual diet. You are not going to lose a pound of fat unless you exercise the equivalent of running about 30 miles above your usual activity.

You can use every tool that you can get when losing weight, and your scale can be an important one. It can keep you accountable, motivate you to keep making good choices or to get back on track, and trigger a voice in your head that reminds you throughout the day to make the choices you truly want to make. Try making a year-long commitment to weigh yourself regularly and log it in Lark, and you may find an extra gear when it comes to losing weight.